Glacier
by made-in-wonder
Summary: Angstshipping, written for fanfic50 on LJ. ""Get off me, boy. Get off me, don't embrace me, you don't want to hold something this cold, it might burn you."


**Disclaimer:** Yugioh is not mine, thank God. It would make even less sense.

* * *

So I hear in Japan it's not supposed to get that cold during the winter. I hear snow's a rarity, that things stay pretty temperate, just dipping down low enough to give the impression of having four seasons, unlike places a little farther south where the weather all stays the same. I hear, as places to spend winter are concerned, Japan's not so bad. So I hear.

Hah.

I lost feeling in my toes about five minutes ago but that hasn't stopped me from standing right here, not moving, head bowed against the snowflakes the wind brushes against the exposed sides of my face, above this stupid itchy scarf I never thought I'd actually wear. I have a suspicion my fingers are next - they've started to stiffen and tingle ominously - but I keep them shoved in my coat pockets, curled into half-fists within fur-lined gloves. I'm a texture person. Smooth things, soft things, usually soothe me.

Not today. I have a different plan, though. Hopefully if I stand out here long enough the cold will seep down through all these layers, dulling those tactile sensations, reaching my core and freezing everything in place until everything, like my toes, is just thick and useless and heavy - but doesn't burn, doesn't ache, doesn't bother. It's making middling progress so far, but the day is still young, not that anyone could tell from the grey slate-blank sky. Someone's erased all the color from the horizon. Maybe the color in the water is next.

I've been watching said water from this pier, watching it lap against the snowdrift-frosted concrete and wondering how much colder it'd have to get to freeze the whole bay over. Little islands of ice float haphazardly among the slightly crested waves, bobbing and slicing, adrift and helpless but without anywhere to go. To freeze I guess the wind would have to let up too, but I like the wind, scissoring against my body, sticking my hair in spiderwebs to the side of my face. It's given me something to focus on, too. This damn wind. This damn cold.

These damn conveniences.

Footsteps slap on the pavement behind me, for the first time since I've driven out here; I'm about to wonder who in their right mind goes to visit an aquarium in the winter when a voice calls, slightly breathy, "Ah, here you are! I've been looking everywhere, Malik-kun..."

I bow my head further, shove my hands deeper into my pockets. Apparently I don't have fingertips anymore. Progress. "Ryou," I acknowledge without looking over, my tongue every bit as useless as my toes: the word falls out of my mouth so awkwardly if I look directly down I might see it flattened on the pavement. Perfect. Someone's told him. I didn't want him to know.

He huffs up behind me, taking little shallow breaths like a dog out for a run; has he been looking for me on foot? Idiot. Rishid respects my privacy, but Sister would have given him a ride. "I called at your apartment but you weren't there," he explains, which I could have figured out on my own by simple logic: where else would one look first for someone who doesn't answer their phone? Ah, but logic also dictates that if someone isn't answering their phone perhaps that's a hint, so maybe it's misplaced when applied here. "Your siblings didn't know where you might be, either..."

"And neither did Yuugi, and neither did Jounouchi, and neither did Anzu or any of the other people we know," I finish irritably, wanting to remain as stalwart and solitary as one of those chunks of ice out on the bay, one of those icicles hanging from the sign on the aquarium behind me - CLOSED FOR THE SEASON; HAPPY HOLIDAYS - but apparently the cold hasn't numbed my center enough yet. "Leave me alone, Ryou."

He joins me at the pier instead; I notice, from this vantage point, that he isn't even wearing boots. He's just in those same canvas sneakers, soaked through from pounding along sidewalks imperfectly cleared, crossing streets slicked smoglike with sludge. By this point his feet must be number than mine. Careless. Typical.

If nothing else, I notice with a glance over, he's remembered to pull on a coat and mittens; he's remembered headgear too, unfortunately - some enormous droopy hat with a little puffball on the end, as well as earflaps that dwindle into long, dangling strings with puffballs on the ends of those too. Does he ever look at himself? He wouldn't know what to look for, anyway.

I hate myself when I get petty, so I bite back a comment and turn back to the far more fascinating dance of the ice floes on the bay. "That's not leaving," I observe, and swear to myself that'll be the last time I speak. I'm silent, I tell myself. I'm numb. It doesn't bother me. Nothing bothers me. I'm cold, I'm inapproachable, he'll take one look at the glacier and then he'll back down.

All mountain-climbers, however, have to have a little bit of reckless stupidity coupled to the careful planning of their expeditions. I'm the careful planning. Three guesses about Ryou.

"Well, I...I think they're worried about you," ventures the intrepid mountain climber, attempting to shove a pick into the ice wall before him; it refuses to give way, the pick bounces with a _clink_ off of the implacable surface, so he readies himself for another go. "Your sister's making a nice dinner. I'm sure you don't want to be late."

Traitor. No, I knew she'd do something. We didn't even have to discuss it. She knew what I meant when I told her I was going out for a while, just like I knew what she'd meant when she asked me to make the grocery list for this week. I wrote down a lot of recipes she's never made before, but she's undeterred so far. If nothing else comes out of this disaster I can at least gloat over actually making her try something new. Small victories. I detest myself.

I'm starting to feel similarly about this pale, puff-breathed fool beside me, which is exactly why I didn't want anyone tipping Ryou off about today. Ryou Bakura is just as easy to hate as he is to love, and I swore months ago to wipe the former from my life as completely as possible. Never again. But who would know better than I the compulsion long-etched traditions possess...?

"You'll get frostbite," I observe, trying a new tactic. "Buy yourself some boots." Ryou shrugs, and when I look down I can see the tops of his sneakers buckling from him wiggling his toes within them. "Ah, I'm all right, don't worry," he remarks, peering down at my own sludge-crusted boots; one of his puffballs slips over his shoulder and dangles, bouncing slightly, on its string. I catch myself wanting to wrap it around his neck, so I look away. Control. Control...that there's still something within me in need of controlling almost makes me flush for shame. But I think my blood's started to set. Just as well.

I can hear him open his mouth to speak. Pointedly, I raise my head and stare out at the horizon. The sea really is so much darker than the sky today. And yet no matter how much I stare out into the hazy murk I just can't make out the sun.

He knows better than to insist, closes his mouth again, shifts beside me, steps closer. I refuse to react. He steps away again. Progress. Success?

No such luck. He laughs, a little nervous tic that sounds like a cross between a hiccup and a gulp, and scratches the back of his head underneath that ridiculous hat. "Sorry, Malik-kun," he stammers bashfully, loopy smile (I don't have to look over to see it; I can _hear_ it) at odds with the stickiness in the back of his throat. "I've only made things worse, haven't I, hahahaha..."

"Shut up," I snap, and instantly chastise myself because what's the point of critiquing a person with no ego to bruise? Life rolls off Ryou Bakura like these little ice floes roll merrily on their way - it leaves its imprint, but he covers it gaily with a fine dusting of plastic models and paper skeletons. Pushed around in the back of the schoolyard, he pushes his spare change across the counter and walks out of the shop with a brand-new toy and a song in his heart. That's Ryou. I don't know what frustrates me more: that it's such a deluded coping mechanism or that it _works_.

He steps backwards, shuffles, and for a moment I think he's slipped on the snow, he makes me nearly break my statue impression to try and catch him - but he's faked me out, unconsciously of course, and steadies himself quickly enough. "I'll just...leave this for you, then," he stutters, drawing a small lumpy package out of one coat pocket and resting it in his footprints in the snow. I can see just from a glance the gift card on the top is homemade. He's folded an envelope himself and everything. "H-happy birthday, Malik-kun..."

"Get back here." My voice is sleet, ice showers, a blank sky lit by an invisible sun. He blinks, but he's the eternal landlord for the game of three thousand years, his greatest talent is following orders. Soon enough he's back by my side, waiting, nervous. Concerned.

"Seven years ago today," I inform him, staring at the snowflakes stuck in his eyelashes to keep from having to watch anything else on his face - but I want him to see my own - "I was tied to a table and gagged. My father heated a knife with a grin on his face, and stepped to where I lay bound and powerless. He branded into me, sliced into my skin, the secrets for which my forefathers sacrificed their chances of happiness and the world above for three thousand years. Yet before he made a single cut - he paused, probably to imagine exactly where he first needed to carve. I lay, helpless, feeling the heat of the knife hovering above me, and _knew_ what was about to come. Yet I could do nothing. Just feel the heat prickle my skin and _know_."

I look away again, the low burn that I've been trying to put out in my chest now closing my throat, searing the back of my mouth. It hurts to breathe, and not just because the wind made me throat raw on the journey down to this pier. I thought no one would be able to find me here. He shouldn't even remember it. Dumb luck. What an accurate idiom. Dumb.

"Whoever informed you what today was," I conclude, fighting to dampen the heat again, clenching my hands into fists inside my pockets and biting back a wince - I shouldn't have done that, it woke up my fingertips, now they too prickle with licks of fire - "apparently omitted that part."

I want him to whimper. I'm expecting it. He's certainly cowed, I think with satisfaction - and he is. But the sniveling doesn't come.

Damn him.

"B-but this is your first birthday without any of that mattering," he finally says simply, weakly, his smile now despairing on his face - why the _hell_ is he still smiling, why the hell is he walking towards me, drawing my hand out of my pocket, squeezing it between his own, and why the hell am I _letting him_. "I baked a cake..."

He cough-gulp-hiccups again, warming my hand between his mittens, rubbing it until the sensation remains and my fingers twitch of their own accord beneath his touch. They then proceed to clench his, clinging for dear life, curling into claws because all I've ever known how to do my whole life is scratch. Damn him. No. I'm going to stand out here until it _doesn't_ bother me anymore, but I'm going to do it on my own terms, my own way, this is my fight and my fight alone, my fight against myself, he doesn't understand, the idiot, the simpleton, he doesn't know what it's like to scream but be cut off, to choke on your own tears or hate so badly you want to die when there's nothing more you want in life but _everything_, this is my chance to finally put it all as behind me as I can while never forgetting the lessons I've learned, but I'm going to do it the way - I - planned -

Get off me, boy. Get off me, don't embrace me, you don't want to hold something this cold, it might burn you. I just might crack, boy, it's brittle out here, and every part of me you warm burns in sheer agony - the agony of life, of vitality returning...boy, get off me, don't destroy me when the world's done enough of that already...

I yank the stupid hat off his head before I kiss him to better sink my screaming claws into his hair. I bite his lip until it bleeds, but he just holds onto me all the harder. I scratch at his back; he rubs mine, unwinding my scarf to give his mitten room to cup my cheek, his own tongue lapping slightly at the blood I've drawn. Mine darts out to catch his before it's vanished; he blinks and huddles all the closer. He's going to bleed on my coat - no, he's sucking on his lip now, he's being _conscientious_. Damn him.

"It better not be _white_ cake," I warn, wondering if my feet will even move after all this time. To my surprise, they do: for a moment they'd felt so leaden the cold had anchored them in place, but I grit my teeth and now one foot's moved forward, with the other not far behind. "Sticks inside my mouth."

He shakes his head as I replace his silly hat and smiles, a little bead of blood still glistening on his lip with all the brilliance of life. By shoving the hat back onto his head I've scrunched his bangs down into his eyes, but he doesn't seem to care. It's not like he ever pays attention to what he sees, anyway. The boy just can't take a hint.

"Chocolate," he promises, and I stumble when we begin to move - my toes don't take kindly to being disturbed. Chastising them, telling them to grow up, I walk anyway.

I'm a little stiff, but Ryou's clutching my side and between the two of us, despite the sheet of ice forming beneath our feet, if I do say so myself we manage pretty well. And if nothing else, it's warmer now.


End file.
